CHAPTER NINE
When I came to again I was lying with my head in Dallisa's lap, and thereddish color of sunset was in the room. Her thighs were soft under myhead, and for an instant I wondered if, in delirium, I had conceded toher. I muttered, "Sun ... not down...."
She bent her face to mine, whispering, "Hush. Hush."
It was heaven, and I drifted off again. After a moment I felt a cupagainst my lips.
"Can you swallow this?"
I could and did. I couldn't taste it yet, but it was cold and wet andfelt heavenly trickling down my throat. She bent and looked into myeyes, and I felt as if I were falling into those reddish and stormydepths. She touched my scarred mouth with a light finger. Suddenly myhead cleared and I sat upright.
"Is this a trick to force me into calling my bet?"
She recoiled as if I had struck her, then the trace of a smile flittedaround her red mouth. Yes, between us it was battle. "You are right tobe suspicious, I suppose. But if I tell you what I know of Rakhal, willyou trust me then?"
I looked straight at her and said, "No."
Surprisingly, she threw back her head and laughed. I flexed my freedwrists cautiously. The skin was torn away and chafed, and my arms achedto the bone. When I moved harsh lances of pain drove through my chest.
"Well, until sunset I have no right to ask you to trust me," saidDallisa when she had done laughing. "And since you are bound by mycommand until the last ray has fallen, I command that you lay your headupon my knees."
I blazed, "You are making a game of me!"
"Is that my privilege? Do you refuse?"
"Refuse?" It was not yet sunset. This might be a torture more complexthan any which had yet greeted me. From the scarlet glint in her eyes Ifelt she was playing with me, as the cat-things of the forest play withtheir helpless victims. My mouth twitched in a grimace of humiliation asI lowered myself obediently until my head rested on her fur-clad knees.
She murmured, smiling, "Is this so unbearable, then?"
I said nothing. Never, never for an instant could I forget that--allhuman, all woman as she seemed--Dallisa's race was worn and old when theTerran Empire had not left their home star. The mind of Wolf, which hasmingled with the nonhuman since before the beginnings of recorded time,is unfathomable to an outsider. I was better equipped than most Earthmento keep pace with its surface acts, but I could never pretend tounderstand its deeper motivations.
It works on complex and irrational logic. Mischief is an integral partof it. Even the deadly blood-feud with Rakhal had begun with anoverelaborate practical joke--which had lost the Service, incidentally,several thousand credits worth of spaceship.
And so I could not trust Dallisa for an instant. Yet it was wonderful tolie here with my head resting against the perfumed softness of her body.
Then suddenly her arms were gripping me, frantic and hungry; the subduedthing in her voice, her eyes, flamed out hot and wild. She was pressingthe whole length of her body to mine, breasts and thighs and long legs,and her voice was hoarse.
"Is this torture too?"
Beneath the fur robe she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of herhair seemed a deeper entrapment than any. Frail as she seemed, her armshad the strength of steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched shoulders,seared through the twisted wrists. Then I forgot the pain.
Over her shoulder the last dropping redness of the sun vanished andplunged the room into orchid twilight.
I caught her wrists in my hands, prizing them backward, twisting themupward over her head. I said thickly, "The sun's down." And then Istopped her wild mouth with mine.
And I knew that the battle between us had reached climax and victorysimultaneously, and any question about who had won it was purelyacademic.
* * * * *
During the night sometime, while her dark head lay motionless on myshoulder, I found myself staring into the darkness, wakeful. Thethrobbing of my bruises had little to do with my sleeplessness; I wasremembering other chained girls from the old days in the Dry-towns, andthe honey and poison of them distilled into Dallisa's kisses. Her headwas very light on my shoulders, and she felt curiously insubstantial,like a woman of feathers.
One of the tiny moons was visible through the slitted windows. I thoughtof my rooms in the Terran Trade City, clean and bright and warm, and allthe nights when I had paced the floor, hating, filled to the teeth withbitterness, longing for the windswept stars of the Dry-towns, the saltsmell of the winds and the musical clashing of the walk of the chainedwomen.
With a sting of guilt, I realized that I had half forgotten Juli and mypledge to her and her misfortune which had freed me again, for this.
Yet I had won, and what they knew had narrowed my planet-wide search toa pinpoint. Rakhal was in Charin.
I wasn't altogether surprised. Charin is the only city on Wolf, exceptthe Kharsa, where the Terran Empire has put down deep roots into theplanet, built a Trade City, a smaller spaceport. Like the Kharsa, itlies within the circle of Terran law--and a million miles outside it.
A nonhuman town, inhabited largely by _chaks_, it is the core and centerof the resistance movement, a noisy town in a perpetual ferment. It wasthe logical place for a renegade. I settled myself so that the ache inmy racked shoulders was less violent, and muttered, "Why Charin?"
Slight as the movement was, it roused Dallisa. She rolled over andpropped herself on her elbows, quoting drowsily, "The prey walks safestat the hunter's door."
I stared at the square of violet moonlight, trying to fit together allthe pieces of the puzzle, and asked half aloud, "What prey and whathunters?"
Dallisa didn't answer. I hadn't expected her to answer. I asked the realquestion in my mind: "Why does Kyral hate Rakhal Sensar, when he doesn'teven know him by sight?"
"There are reasons," she said somberly. "One of them is Miellyn, my twinsister. Kyral climbed the steps of the Great House by claiming us bothas his consorts. He is our father's son by another wife."
That explained much. Brother-and-sister marriages, not uncommon in theDry-towns, are based on expediency and suspicion, and are frequently,though not always loveless. It explained Dallisa's taunts, and it partlyexplained, only partly, why I found her in my arms. It did not explainRakhal's part in this mysterious intrigue, nor why Kyral had taken mefor Rakhal, (but only after he remembered seeing me in Terran clothing).
I wondered why it had never occurred to me before that I might bemistaken for Rakhal. There was no close resemblance between us, but acasual description would apply equally well to me or to Rakhal. Myheight is unusual for a Terran--within an inch of Rakhal's own--and wehad roughly the same build, the same coloring. I had copied his walk,imitated his mannerisms, since we were boys together.
And, blurring minor facial characteristics, there were the scars of the_kifirgh_ on my mouth, cheeks, and shoulders. Anyone who did not know usby sight, anyone who had known us by reputation from the days when wehad worked together in the Dry-towns, might easily take one of us forthe other. Even Juli had blurted, "You're so much like--" beforethinking better of it.
Other odd bits of the puzzle floated in my mind, stubbornly refusing totake on recognizable patterns, the disappearance of a toy-seller; Juli'shysterical babbling; the way the girl--Miellyn?--had vanished into ashrine of Nebran; and the taunts of Dallisa and the old man about amysterious "Toymaker." And something, some random joggling of a memory,in that eerie trading in the city of the Silent Ones. I knew all thesethings fitted together somehow, but I had no real hope that Dallisacould complete their pattern for me.
She said, with a vehemence that startled me, "Miellyn is only theexcuse! Kyral hates Rakhal because Rakhal will compromise and becausehe'll fight!"
She rolled over and pressed herself against me in the darkness. Hervoice trembled. "Race, our world is dying. We can't stand against Terra.And there are other things, worse things."
I sat up, surprised to find myself defending Terra to this girl. Afterall these y
ears I was back in my own world. And yet I heard myself sayquietly, "The Terrans aren't exploiting Wolf. We haven't abolished therule of Shainsa. We've changed nothing."
It was true. Terra held Wolf by compact, not conquest. They paid, andpaid generously, for the lease of the lands where their Trade Citieswould rise, and stepped beyond them only when invited to do so.
"We let any city or state that wants to keep its independence governitself until it collapses, Dallisa. And they do collapse after ageneration or so. Very few primitive planets can hold out against us.The people themselves get tired of living under feudal or theocraticsystems, and they beg to be taken into the Empire. That's all."
"But that's just it," Dallisa argued. "You give the people all thosethings we used to give them, and you do it better. Just by being here,you are killing the Dry-towns. They're turning to you and leaving us,and you let them do it."
I shook my head. "We've kept the Terran Peace for centuries. What do youexpect? Should we give you arms, planes, bombs, weapons to hold yourslaves down?"
"Yes!" she flared at me. "The Dry-towns have ruled Wolfsince--since--you, you can't even imagine how long! And we made compactwith you to trade here--"
"And we have rewarded you by leaving you untouched," I said quietly."But we have not forbidden the Dry-towns to come into the Empire andwork with Terra."
She said bitterly, "Men like Kyral will die first," and pressed her facehelplessly against me. "And I will die with them. Miellyn broke away,but I cannot! Courage is what I lack. Our world is rotten, Race, rottenall through, and I'm as rotten as the core of it. I could have killedyou today, and I'm here in your arms. Our world is rotten, but I've noconfidence that the new world will be better!"
I put my hand under her chin, and looked down gravely into her face,only a pale oval in the darkness. There was nothing I could say; she hadsaid it all, and truthfully. I had hated and yearned and starved forthis, and when I found it, it turned salty and bloody on my lips, likeDallisa's despairing kisses. She ran her fingers over the scars on myface, then gripped her small thin hands around my wrists so fiercelythat I grunted protest.
"You will not forget me," she said in her strangely lilting voice. "Youwill not forget me, although you were victorious." She twisted and laylooking up at me, her eyes glowing faintly luminous in darkness. I knewthat she could see me as clearly as if it were day. "I think it was myvictory, not yours, Race Cargill."
Gently, on an impulse I could not explain, I picked up one delicatewrist, then the other, unclasping the heavy jeweled bracelets. She letout a stifled cry of dismay. And then I tossed the chains into a cornerbefore I drew her savagely into my arms again and forced her head backunder my mouth.
* * * * *
I said good-bye to her alone, in the reddish, windswept space before theGreat House. She pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered,"Race, take me with you!"
For answer I only picked up her narrow wrists and turned them over on mypalm. The jeweled bracelets were clasped again around the thinly bonedjoints, and on some self-punishing impulse she had shortened the chainsso that she could not even put her arms around me. I lifted the punishedwrists to my mouth and kissed them gently.
"You don't want to leave, Dallisa."
I was desperately sorry for her. She would go down with her dying world,proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and Itasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shakenwith tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into theshadow of the great dark house.
I never saw her again.